Ten Years of Web Surfing

I suddenly realised that I have been addicted to web surfing for a full decade.

Although I cannot pinpoint the exact date when I first clicked on my PC modem to get connected to the Internet, I clearly remember that not long after I signed on an Internet account from the Canberra chapter of the PC Users Group of Australia, I heard about the introduction of a "browser" named Navigator from Netscape. Being eager to try all the latest and greatest, I downloaded and used it immediately. Since it was October 1994 that Netscape released a beta version of Navigator to the public, I have chosen that month - which was exactly 10 years ago, as the starting point of my web journey.

Unfortunately I also cannot remember when exactly my web site was first written and uploaded. But it must be in 1995, and my "site" then consisted of only one page: "News on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan". So, in a few months time, you may read my blog entry on why I choose a certain month to celebrate "ten years of joetsang.net"

Finally, October 1994 was also a significant date for Chinese-reading web surfers like me. I read somewhere that NJStar (南極星) was born in that month as well. Today's browsers of course can read web sites in practically all languages. That was not the case in the good old days. To read an online Chinese newspaper, an external application must be run to correctly display the Chinese characters. NJStar has always been the best and helped me a lot.